Why Kon Tiki? I hear you ask. From the confines of a 1950s Lancashire cotton mill town, this seemed like the ideal escape for an impressionable schoolgirl. Before satellites and computers, to navigate westwards across the Pacific by the stars seemed like the ultimate adventure. Besides, I thought the crew were rather dishy. I remember constructing models of the raft at school and studying the historical reason for their journey. Recently I was drawn to re-reading the book and found not a trace of machismo. Instead, it mixed pragmatism with poetry and romance."The world was simple, stars in the darkness. Whether it was 1947 B.C. or A.D. suddenly became of no significance. We lived, and that we felt with alert intensity...we were swallowed up in the absolute common measure of history, endless unbroken darkness under a swarm of stars.."
This 2.0 journey doesn't end on a Polynesian island - it continues.
As suggested in the tasks, some of this emerging social software is suitable for library application, some not. RSS, flickr and del.icio.us are the obvious choices, though we shouldn't entirely discount the trendy, cool "entertainment" ones. As long as people are interconnected via these technologies with their "great good places"*. The key is user participation and feedback; we cannot predict whether our customers will be comfortable using this new technology, but are preparing ourselves in case. Libraries will link to each other, even if the customer/library link takes longer to get off the ground. Our library skills are needed to integrate emerging technologies with existing library systems.
I think I'll be the only person looking at this blog, but it allows me to edit thoughts as the journey continues.
Have just noted in one of the articles for suggested reading, that libraries in Ohio are considering redundancy for employees who do not embrace Library 2.0, and including Library 2.0 in job specifications. Hmmm.
* see link at right - Alan Bundy
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